Local Links of Interest:Google’s Universal Search

Many of the changes that we have been seeing in google Maps over the past few days have been part of Google’s new Universal search upgrade. These upgrades magnify the importance of Google Maps as they allow for “The best answer is still the best answer” local results to be inserted in all of Google’s organic search results. This will lead to a dramatic increase of exposure of local data. Greg Sterling estimates that as many as 40% of ALL searches have local intent and as Google figures out which ones are (even without the city, st modifier), we will be seeing Google Maps data much more frequently.

2 thoughts on “Local Links of Interest:Google’s Universal Search”

Nice overview and references. Approximately 3 days after the change was installed I’m watching only one category and a variety of search queries and the status vis a vis the onebox and g maps is changing daily. On one day a specific query will see a onebox and on another day it won’t. For the same query on different days I see the onebox on the top of the page and the next day the onebox is below 3 or 4 sites.

Google is massively testing user behavior across the board.

As a webmaster/site owner/ business person….my site which generally sits at a #1 organic rank for a wide variety of relevant phrases that combine geo and business terms is seeing dramatically different placement vis a vis the rotating/changing status of the onebox.

Yes they do seem to be in experimental mode (I am sure that you saw my city maps example which appears to be a very visible experiment in user preferences)…but I am more concerned about the unfinished nature of the Maps text view. It implies a certain lack of fit and finish to the whole affair. Google has 10,000 products in beta why do they need a finished one that isn’t working quite right?